Gary Lutz: Heartscald

<<|| [23.07.11] Gary Lutz: Heartscald* ||>>

HOME
When I got back from the mall, everything in my room had been rotated almost a whole eighth of an inch to the right. I am taping it all back into place.

FEMALE VOICE ON PHONE: “NO MORE CONTACT”
I can't speak for myself, but a job does things to a person, deducts a person pretty brutally from life. Desks are terrible places, no matter how many wheels a chair might have. You can't do much about how drawers fill up.

NEIGHBORS
He slips a note under my door, says he has forgotten how to talk, so is there something that can be done? I meet him in the lobby. I bring my instruments in a wastebasket. "It's my first time," I warn. I go to work on him. His first words: "I've got something in my eye. A kingdom or something."

THE TROUBLE BETWEEN PEOPLE USUALLY GETS ITS START
The pastor kept saying, "Thy will be done," and all I could think was, "Thy what will be done?"

SHE WAS CARDIACALLY ALL OVER THE PLACE
What they told me is that when the doctors opened him up, they found lots of accordion files, jars full of wheat pennies, a glockenspiel, a couple of storm windows, and told him there was nothing they could do.

WORK
My humanity would have been misemployed no matter what direction I might have taken in life, but, no question, I have walked away cravenly from blocked-up photocopiers, paper jams of any kind. A lot of toner has gone into what I have done.

THERE WERE WIDER AND WIDER SLITS IN A DAY
She had a three-legged table. I always felt bad about that.

WOMAN
I keep seeing the phrase “a women” everywhere I look. It can’t be just a typo anymore.

FIRST WIFE
I don’t know which is finally sicker—specifics or engulfing abstractions. She said she was just looking for someone to ride out some sadness on.

MOTHER AND BANGED-UP SON
Looking back over everything I might have ever said, I see that I have never come down hard enough on any of the rooms I lived inside. I want there to be science behind it if and when I do.

HONOR MY WISH
I tried drinking, but it wasn’t extinctive of the parts of me most in need of extinction. Plus, I had a good umbrella, but it got blown inside out, and I couldn’t close the thing. I set it down on the sidewalk and watched it blow off into the storm. I welcome any drowsy and senseless sincerity.

WE HAD TO MOVE TWO TOWNS TO THE LEFT, WHICH WAS WEST, WESTISH, IN THIS CASE
A calendar was hung in the kitchen as if to say: Expect more of same.

MOST OF MY LIFE TAKES PLACE ON THE FLOOR
“Get over here!” I shouted into the phone. The woman came. She thought I had meant just her.

THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANTED TO SAY, BUT SO WHAT?
I wish I could inhabit my life instead of just trespassing on it.

Gary Lutz is the author of the short-story collections STORIES IN THE WORST WAY (Calamari Press),
I LOOKED ALIVE (Black Square Editions/The Brooklyn Rail), and PARTIAL LIST OF PEOPLE TO BLEACH (Future Tense Books). His latest collection, DIVORCER, is forthcoming from Calamari Press.

*HEARTSCALD is constituted of phrasing from pieces by Lutz, as well as from interviews with him, that appeared first in The Believer, Bookslut, Detroit: Stories, The Quarterly, Sleepingfish, 3rd bed, and Wag's Review.

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HOME When I got back from the mall, everything in my room had been rotated almost a whole eighth of an inch to the right. I am taping it all back into place.

FEMALE VOICE ON PHONE: “NO MORE CONTACT” I can't speak for myself, but a job does things to a person, deducts a person pretty brutally from life. Desks are terrible places, no matter how many wheels a chair might have. You can't do much about how drawers fill up.

NEIGHBORS He slips a note under my door, says he has forgotten how to talk, so is there something that can be done? I meet him in the lobby. I bring my instruments in a wastebasket. "It's my first time," I warn. I go to work on him. His first words: "I've got something in my eye. A kingdom or something."

THE TROUBLE BETWEEN PEOPLE USUALLY GETS ITS START The pastor kept saying, "Thy will be done," and all I could think was, "Thy what will be done?"

SHE WAS CARDIACALLY ALL OVER THE PLACE What they told me is that when the doctors opened him up, they found lots of accordion files, jars full of wheat pennies, a glockenspiel, a couple of storm windows, and told him there was nothing they could do.

WORK My humanity would have been misemployed no matter what direction I might have taken in life, but, no question, I have walked away cravenly from blocked-up photocopiers, paper jams of any kind. A lot of toner has gone into what I have done.

THERE WERE WIDER AND WIDER SLITS IN A DAY She had a three-legged table. I always felt bad about that.

WOMAN I keep seeing the phrase “a women” everywhere I look. It can’t be just a typo anymore.

FIRST WIFE I don’t know which is finally sicker—specifics or engulfing abstractions. She said she was just looking for someone to ride out some sadness on.

MOTHER AND BANGED-UP SON Looking back over everything I might have ever said, I see that I have never come down hard enough on any of the rooms I lived inside. I want there to be science behind it if and when I do.

HONOR MY WISH I tried drinking, but it wasn’t extinctive of the parts of me most in need of extinction. Plus, I had a good umbrella, but it got blown inside out, and I couldn’t close the thing. I set it down on the sidewalk and watched it blow off into the storm. I welcome any drowsy and senseless sincerity.

WE HAD TO MOVE TWO TOWNS TO THE LEFT, WHICH WAS WEST, WESTISH, IN THIS CASE A calendar was hung in the kitchen as if to say: Expect more of same.

MOST OF MY LIFE TAKES PLACE ON THE FLOOR “Get over here!” I shouted into the phone. The woman came. She thought I had meant just her.

THIS IS NOT WHAT I WANTED TO SAY, BUT SO WHAT? I wish I could inhabit my life instead of just trespassing on it.